


By Proxy

by CircleUp



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Magical Artifacts, Sex Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:13:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CircleUp/pseuds/CircleUp
Summary: How May meets Stephen and they honestly hit it off.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man)/Stephen Strange
Comments: 3
Kudos: 7





	By Proxy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pandasushiroll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandasushiroll/gifts).



> A commission.

Stephen Strange isn't a man who gives out gifts often.

It's something May learns early on in their relationship, if what they are can even be called that. His wealth is immeasurable, thanks to his ability to conjure something from nothing, but as a result he values almost nothing material and rarely thinks to give out presents.

She's heard stories about this from Wong, who is shockingly a huge gossip, something May discovers over the course of her visits to the Sanctum. Her first encounter with the... bodyguard? Personal assistant? Librarian?... is in the vast foyer, where her attempts to make conversation are met with absolute silence as Wong dusts some priceless vase as if she isn't there.

This becomes a ritual, or at least, a ritual for May. She enters the Sanctum and waits for the Sorcerer Supreme to be bothered to grace her (and honestly, if the sex weren't amazing she'd be having so many second thoughts) with his presence. Half the time, she runs into Wong in some fashion and then makes idle and one-sided smalltalk with him in which May does all the talking and it isn't entirely clear whether or not Wong even hears her. Stephen shows up and takes her back to yet another room (and there are so many, even by now she hasn't seen them all) in the Sanctum that is filled with a unique and powerful history she gets to appreciate from her back.

May honestly becomes very fond of this. Even though she hasn't heard a word out of him, she feels a sort of connection with Wong anyway, which is why it's such a shock when she's ranting one afternoon in the study about a driver who'd nearly caused a wreck and Wong says, "That's why I don't drive."

May is stunned into absolute silence. The only thing she can think to say, ten seconds later, is, "What?" but Wong is back to rearranging books like he hadn't said anything, and May almost gaslights herself into believing it didn't happen at all.

After that, she's determined to break the silence again and pulls out every stop. She brings him cookies, coffees, teas, cakes. She finds random baubles to display. She brings photos of her nephew. She tells outlandish stories. Most of it he ignores, but every now and then he twitches a brow or picks something up to nibble, and over the course of four painstaking months, May has actually learned an incredible amount about this mysterious assistant. Wong likes gingerbread cookies, but not if cut into shapes of things. He likes Jasmine tea, twenty seconds over-brewed. He likes cat memes, videos of people painting, and any story involving someone doing something unbelievably stupid.

One day he says, while in the middle of watching videos of kittens knocking things over on her phone, "It's almost impossible to get Stephen to pay the utilities."

May honestly doesn't know what to do with this information.

Wong picks up his tea cup and sips it. He never sweetens his tea, unless if it's black, and then he oversweetens it.

"Oh?" She tries when it doesn't look like he's going to say anything else.

"He can make money out of nothing," Wong begins, and May can tell this is not a new grievance. This is something Wong has been dealing with for years. "But try going to ask him to. You can't. He'll say something about being too busy to 'utilize the mystic arts in such a mundane fashion'—" this is said in Wong's best impression of Stephen's voice, which is terrible "—and it isn't until the Netflix is shut off that he'll conjure up some cash for me to use."

There is so much information to unpack in this short rant that May doesn't know where to begin.

She says, "What Netflix shows does he watch?" because the idea of Stephen sitting in front of a television and binging Netflix's latest drama is almost too much.

Wong snorts and predictably doesn't answer, but after that, he talks more. Not a lot, and not often, but more.

May has many friends, but this particular one is the one she's most proud of having.

—

So Stephen doesn't give out gifts often, or anything else, actually, including but not limited to help.

She's furious about that when they first meet, because they first meet when May has to come get Peter from the hospital.

Tony Stark is there, in his top-dollar suit with his couldn't-care-less smirk even though he's hanging around in a hospital and no one's fooled by the nonchalance. There had just been a big battle, and Peter's been hurt ostensibly as 'a regular civilian who just happened to be in the area, nothing to see here,' although May is fairly sure this wing of the hospital is paid very well to keep their mouths shut about what they see. She brushes past nurses and is directed to Peter's room, and spends a little time fawning over him, like there's anything she can do that the doctors aren't.

He's fine, all things considered, or he will be. He sports a broken arm, a concussion, and a few deep gashes across his side that have already been stitched up.

"The concussion is the most worrying, but relatively speaking isn't of great concern," says a voice behind her as she looks over her nephew, now asleep, and May turns, expecting a doctor, to find a man in ridiculous robes.

"I'm sorry," May says, bewildered at first. He's familiar, but it takes her a second to recognize him from the news. "Doctor Strange?"

"Mmm." He looks incredibly out of place amidst the traditional Western medicine setup, but doesn't appear to be uncomfortable at all.

May is skeptical, "Are you Peter's doctor?"

"No," he says. "I assisted at the end of the fight."

It's the wrong thing to say, though Stephen doesn't realize it immediately as May asks, "The end?" in a deceptively calm tone.

"Yes."

"Aren't you the person who can manipulate time and space?" May begins. Her voice hasn't risen, but there's an edge in it like biting into aluminum.

Stephen has had this argument many times with many people and immediately clues in to where it's going. "There is more to protect in this world than your son."

"Nephew," she corrects. Her eyes have narrowed. "So you could have prevented all of—"

"No."

"But you just said—"

"No," Stephen repeats calmly. "It doesn't work like that." He can see May gathering herself up for a fight, and sighs. "There is a river flowing to the sea, and you like to put paper boats in it."

May, oddly, doesn't seem to appreciate condescending storytime while in the hospital room of her nephew, and snaps, "What?"

Stephen continues calmly. "You can pick up the boats and put them back down in different places in the water. You can even build a little dam that will hold them back for some time. But in the end, Ms. Parker, no matter how you move the boats, the water will make it to the sea."

There's silence as May tries to decide the best way to tell the sorcerer to go fuck himself, and it's broken by a laugh at the door.

"Strange, go home. She's gonna spontaneously develop laser eyes and kill you," Tony says. He's leaning on the doorframe as casual as you please, like he owns the whole hospital.

"She asked a question."

"Time and place, buddy. We'll work on your bedside later, yeah?" He winks at May and peels himself out of the doorway so he can clap Stephen on the shoulder in a way meant to steer him to the door.

"What an ass," May says when it's just Tony and Peter and her again.

"Oh you don't even know. Coffee? I know a place," Tony says, because he always does, and an assistant brings them the best lattes May has ever tasted, and Tony disappears with a phone call, and she's left alone to keep watch.

—

May doesn't know why she can't let it go.

Stephen Strange has no obligation to her nephew, but doesn't he though? He's a super powerful wizard and she doesn't care what his stupid ocean metaphor implies; she is pretty sure that he could be doing a lot more than he is to keep other superheroes safe. She convinces herself it isn't just about Peter either. Superheroes die in battle all the time, and now she can really appreciate how they are someone's family. That's a person: someone's child, or parent, or sibling, or friend.

She's bothered by his casual dismissal of it all.

Ben said once that with great power came great responsibility. He was always quoting something; Ben was a man with his nose in a book half the time and in other people's businesses the rest of it. It isn't a criticism. Her late husband truly believed that each person had an obligation to use the means they'd been given to make the world better, however large or small.

Stephen Strange couldn't possibly be doing as much as he was able.

So she invites him to coffee. May has absolutely no plan other than yelling a little bit more, which will be cathartic, so she doesn't plan anything else.

She's surprised, however, to get there and find him in civilian clothes: jeans and a button-down shirt he's rolled the sleeves up partway on.

It completely throws her off.

"Where's your robe?" She says at the entrance.

Stephen arches an eyebrow and opens the door for her. "I do wear other things," he says, which isn't true at all. He's wearing his robes right now, but isn't without some social graces and is concealing everything from the Eye of Agamotto around his neck to the robes befitting the Sorcerer Supreme through an illusion.

"Huh," she says, honestly thrown, and is even more taken aback as they get into the coffee shop's short line and Stephen makes smalltalk with her.

"It seems like it's going to rain," he says.

May has absolutely no defense prepared for Earth's most powerful sorcerer talking casually with her about the weather, especially when it's so blatantly incorrect. The sky is clear and blue outside. "What?"

"I was trying to cleverly allude to the fact that Thor Odinson is expected this afternoon and you should carry an umbrella. An Earl Grey, please," he adds as they reach the front of the line.

May wonders if this is actually a weird dream she's having. The barista looks at her expectantly. "Um. A peppermint mocha?"

It's the middle of summer. "We don't—" the barista begins, apologetic, and May changes it to another latte which isn't going to be half as good as the one she had with Tony, and Stephen pays while she tries to recover from social embarrassment.

They get their drinks and find two empty chairs and sit down as May takes a moment to compose herself and Stephen continues to make absent remarks in a deadpan that she's starting to realize is actually humor.

She doesn't bring up Peter. Instead, she asks about Thor, and that starts off a conversation that lasts almost two hours. Stephen's got a dry sense of humor that misses the mark for most people, but after May gets used to it, she finds it absolutely hysterical.

She can't help it. She's a little won over, and has forgotten all about yelling at him. She's gearing up to ask for his phone number (does he even have a phone?) when May learns that for all of Stephen's language idiosyncrasies, wizards don't have unnecessarily flowered up euphemisms.

"I think I'll retire to the Sanctum," he says, and May only has a moment to feel a pang of disappointment when the man continues: "Would you care to join me for a cup of coffee, Ms. Parker?"

They are literally sitting at the coffee shop still, and even if she still has doubts about his intentions there, the possessive way his eyes rake over May's body leaves no room for misinterpretation.

May chooses to misinterpret anyway.

"Oh!" She says, unable to hold back the playful smirk that starts to emerge. "If it's a money thing, I don't mind treating you to a second cup here!"

It's the first time that she sees him slightly flustered, and the last time for a very long time that it happens again.

Stephen clears his throat, purposeful, as he recovers from the momentary surprise—he doesn't often need to adjust his game plan from the original—to come back even stronger: "I was thinking something else."

They're both on the same page, both know they're playing a game, and suddenly May wants to make Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme of Earth and man she only just really met, say exactly what he wants to do to her out loud here in this very public, semi-crowded coffee shop.

"There's a bar next door that has pretty good reviews," May says sweetly.

Stephen's eyes narrow and she thinks—irrationally, bizarrely—that maybe she's gone too far. She feels like a bug pinned under that dark gaze. A thrill shoots up her spine and down, to her gut, pooling there in the beginning of white hot arousal.

"Ms. Parker," he enunciates, both soft and still clear enough to be heard through the entire coffee shop, and May's cheeks are flaming before he's even finished speaking, "What I want to do to you isn't appropriate for the bar next door."

The table next to them, a couple in their mid-thirties, stifles laughter into muffled snorts as they exchange did-you-hear-that looks of delight and disbelief, and May is so embarrassed and turned on that she might die.

Stephen continues in that same black velvet voice that's all-encompassing, wrapping May in dark promise that leaves her feeling bare, "But if you want to tempt me, by all means. Let's go have drinks at the bar."

They don't have drinks at the bar. Stephen takes them into his magnificent sanctum, and May realizes she isn't going to be given a tour of anything but Stephen's lips and hands when she's pressed against the wall the second they're inside. 

Stephen is tall, with shoulders broad enough that she feels framed by him as he licks at the seam of her lips to get her to open so he can map out her mouth.

They're probably moving far too fast, but May can't get enough. She feels drunk on the kiss alone as her eyes close, with one hand splayed on his chest and the other curled at her side as she tries to remember what she's supposed to do with it. The kiss is a slick, hot glide that tells her he'll probably be just as talented with his tongue somewhere else, and May forgets she has to breathe until Stephen lets her come up for air.

He breaks the kiss to pull back and cup her cheek while she gasps, and when Stephen brushes his thumb across her lower lip, May shudders and desperately tries to stop herself from chasing it with her tongue.

"Stephen," she breathes out, opening eyes she didn't realize she'd closed, and then May practically jumps out of her skin. "What the hell is that?!"

She's never gone from toe-curling arousal to feeling like she's been dunked in ice water before, but in May's defense, no man she's gone home with has ever had a red cloak detach itself from around his shoulders to float carelessly away under its own power.

He's wearing his robes, somehow. It doesn't make any sense at all to May, and she's still trying to figure that out. Stephen doesn't look like he appreciates being interrupted by sentient outerwear. 

"My Cloak," he explains, and tries to kiss her again.

May ducks it, unable to let this go. It's one thing to hear about magic and intellectually understand its place in the world, but it's something else entirely to see it in action. Even with all the mutants and handful of mutates roaming around, seeing an honest-to-God magical artifact animate itself in front of her was stunning. It's more impressive than whatever the hell Stephen did to go from jeans to robes. Her eyes don't leave the Cloak, as she puts a hand out toward it with her palm up, like she was letting a feral animal sniff her for familiarity.

The Cloak pauses mid-float. A corner lifts to stroke up her arm, ticklish, raising goosebumps across her flesh.

"That's incredible," she breathes, and the mood is shattered.

Stephen gives a put-out sigh and resigns himself to giving her an actual tour as the Cloak comes along.

—

Things do grind briefly to a halt when it comes to the condom.

It's almost two months after the coffee shop and they've met many more times, made out an equal portion of them, and yet May has singularly failed to get Stephen into bed. It's no fault of either of them. Stephen, it turns out, doesn't help with most battles because he has a dozen other world-ending issues to tackle at any given moment, and generally trusts that the rest of Earth's heroes can sort most fights out while he deals with those. She comes over a lot, but most of the time ends up talking at Wong because Stephen is busy or interrupted by one horrible event after another.

Oddly, she doesn't really mind. It's exciting to see this side of things in a way that hearing about it through Peter isn't. Peter's stories are always stressful since they usually involve him almost dying. She doesn't have the same worry with Stephen, and can enjoy the wild tales anxiety-free, mostly. Obviously there's the part about Earth almost being destroyed more times than she can count, but May finds that's a concern she can look at with detachment.

So she doesn't mind how slowly things are progressing. Besides, figuring out Stephen has become entertaining by itself. May finds most people are very easy to read, but the sorcerer is an exception she's having fun unraveling.

"May Parker," he rumbles. She's in the library and has been here for nearly an hour waiting, and Stephen's using the voice that always means she's going to end up kiss drunk and half naked somewhere before the next emergency comes up.

She doesn't mind and turns around.

"Sorcerer Supreme," she jokes back, that smile playing around her lips. Stephen closes the gap to kiss it off of her, but it only grows wider, and when he breaks it she teases, "Imagine meeting you here."

"Of all the places," Stephen degrees gravely, and May is just a little more gone.

The crush has been building for a long time, and May is trying not to let it show, because she's pretty sure she isn't the only person Stephen brings back here.

She tells herself she doesn't mind as he growls into her mouth and tugs clothes off of both of them until she's backed to a table.

He goes to his knees and she's left breathless as Stephen spreads her legs with one hand on each knee. His dark eyes have her captivated, and slowly he leans down without breaking eye contact to brush a kiss to the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

May tries not to moan.

The next kiss is more of a nip that he soothes over with his lips as he trails upward, slowly to her aching warmth, until warm air ghosts across her.

"Stephen," she whispers, needing more, and his tongue laps out to flick against her.

He's good, teasing her slowly with kitten licks until she's suddenly filled by two fingers, so much and not enough. She shivers and moans again, trying not to move where she's spread out on the table's edge.

Stephen thrusts his fingers lazily in and out of her, lighting sparks inside her, and in no hurry until she can't stand it any more.

"I want you in me." It's a plea, because May thinks she'll shatter if she spends another second on the edge like this, and he slowly withdraws his fingers and takes both into his mouth to slowly suck.

"Please," May rasps, and Stephen stands, a hand dropping to stroke himself a few times, and he's about to line himself up when she stops him because she isn't this far gone.

"Condom?"

"I don't need one," the wizard reassures her, and May ducks out of the kiss he tries to claim, incredulous.

"Even if you're snipped you need one."

"I can regulate my sperm count magically and cannot carry disease," Stephen says, and it's the absolute funniest and most ridiculous thing she's ever heard. She tries not to laugh in disbelief.

"What?"

"Besides, sex is a powerful ward," Stephen adds, far too serious, and it's everything May can do to stop from bursting out laughing.

No, scratch that. She laughs. It completely ruins the mood.

"Please, please tell me that isn't your pickup line," she snorts, and gasps, "No! Stephen!" when the sorcerer only looks back at her with the slightest arch in a brow.

"Are you done?"

May blinks and the smile gradually fades as she realizes it: "You're serious."

"Entirely."

She glances to the window, but outside doesn't give her any insight to this bizarre situation.

"No," she says because even if she honestly believes him, it's too much. She closes her legs and straightens on the table, embarrassed and ready to defend the choice, but Stephen only nods.

"I'll have one next time," he promises her, and he does.

—

The present that she absolutely in no way ever expects arrives on her doorstep in a thin, long box, and absurdly she thinks it's a wand at first after Peter retrieves it.

"What's this?" He wants to know as he carries it in from the door to clunk onto the counter. It has no post stamp, but the return address is from the Sanctum Sanctorum, and now May wonders if Stephen honest to God had it delivered by an owl.

"Hogwarts wand," she jokes as she pulls the box toward her.

Peter as usual has something to say about her half-assed references: "You don't get your wand from Hogwarts, Aunt May. That's the school. The shop's different."

"I bet I'd be a Hufflepuff," May counters, her attempt to sound cool. She has no idea what any of the Houses mean but of the four absurd names, Hufflepuff has always been the one that actually stuck in her head.

Peter groans, says something about how he doesn't have time to correct everything that needs to be corrected in order for him to even start replying to that, and grabs two apples before the escape to his room.

May is glad she didn't open the box in front of Peter, because it is indeed a type of wand. When she cuts the flaps open, she finds a purple and silver dildo inside.

She blushes so hard and pulls it into her chest so fast that May doesn't notice the note tucked into the box next to it, too worried that Peter will somehow know what it is even though he's in his bedroom by now. May doesn't open the package again until she's safe in her own messy bedroom, with the door locked and with her sitting on her unmade mess of a comforter.

Red-faced, she sees the note this time and plucks it up. The small card is from heavy stock, something probably expensive. The front is stamped with the Seal of the Vishanti, which though relatively unknown in purpose is more commonly recognized as the distinctive round window of the Sanctum. Like everything that Stephen does, the writing (a beautiful, flourished script done by hand and what looks like fountain pen) is over-the-top formal.

_Dear Ms. Parker,_

_Enclosed you will find a present that I desire you use on yourself. It holds within it magical properties which I will elucidate for you by request, but prefer and suggest that you wait until after a trial period. Should you choose to remain in suspense, I will divulge them to you at the start of next week._

_Yours cordially,  
Stephen Strange, M.D., Sorcerer Supreme_

May can honestly not help it. She laughs, startled out of being incredibly embarrassed by how ridiculous Stephen always is, and when it makes Peter call, "What is it?" curiously from the bedroom, she snatches the note and the dildo box up irrationally, like he might get through the locked door and come in.

"Nothing! Read something funny on Facebook. You want some cookies?"

"I'm good! I'm going out," Peter calls back, and it's evening so she knows what that means.

"Be safe," she says in a normal tone. She doesn't say I love you this time, because she's still looking at the dildo and that feels weird.

While Peter needs to raise his voice to be heard across the house, May just speaks normally even though her nephew is two closed doors away. Peter's hearing goes beyond supernormal. Even now she thinks he underplays it and pretends he isn't hearing as much as he actually can. May thinks sometimes Peter misses being normal, so she lets him pretend.

That's just one of the many bizarre things May has to learn about living with him, though she's done her best to accommodate and adapt. After Peter got his powers, in some ways it was like meeting a new person. Everything changed.

She hears the door close.

May doesn't know when Peter will be back, but she doesn't waste the opportunity. The last thing she wants to explain is any noises he hears her making from her room, and there end up being a lot of them.

The dildo is almost warm, and feels incredibly real when she presses it slowly inside of herself. She groans as it opens her up, and groans again as she starts to use it to fuck herself, slowly at first and then faster and faster.

By the time the orgasm washes over it, she swears she can feel it twitch in her, spilling seed that isn't there even after she irrationally checks.

It's incredible and she uses it every day when Peter's out that week.

It feels just like the real thing.

—

"It is magically linked to me," Stephen explains when she, blushing, brings up just how much she likes the toy. They're in his bedroom this time and though they're both dressed, May has no pretenses about what exactly they're going to be doing in the room.

She's sitting on the edge of his bed, her shoes off, and looks up to stare at him for several seconds, but by now she can't really say she's surprised. "What?"

Stephen is hardly apologetic. The small smirk that plays around his lips is smug. "I could feel each time you used it," and oh that explains the twitching, the warmth, why it felt so real inside of her.

May's furiously red because apparently she can use the dildo her not-boyfriend sent her by carrier or owl or hand delivered or something just fine, but actually talking about it is another thing. She doesn't let the embarrassment last long and pushes herself to her feet to step toward him. 

"So that was a taste of you? The real you?" She licks her lips. "Is it close to the same thing?"

Stephen's eyes darken as May comes to a halt before him, fingers curling in the fabric at his chest. "I purchased condoms by your request if you want to find out."

It's the stupidest line she's ever heard and Stephen is full of those, but May only lifts her chin and kisses him and grins.

"Yeah," she says, because she very much does. They've danced around it long enough. "We might as well find out."

**Author's Note:**

> For Panda of Soups (https://soups.jcink.net).


End file.
